Federal authorities scripted a made-for-Hollywood mole to bring down an operation and charge 22 people with gambling and extortion, the NBC Chicago investigative team has learned.
It is a daring behind-the-scenes story that is being sharply criticized by an attorney for the main defendant in the case.
A photo of accused gambling boss James “Jimmy the Greek” Gerodemos, opening wide for a cash sandwich, is among the evidence put forth by federal prosecutors. U.S. prosecutors say the “weight of the evidence is great” against restaurateur Gerodemos and 21 other co-conspirators. And since they were charged last month, the NBC Chicago Investigative Team has worked to find out how such weighty evidence was actually gathered.
Now we have the answer: The feds used an undercover recipe, and the main ingredient was a spy.
The FBI planted an undercover employee in the northwest Indiana restaurant that was headquarters for the alleged gambling enterprise.
Gino’s Steakhouse in Merrillville, Indiana, and Paragon Restaurant in Hobart were headquarters of the Gerodemos Gambling Organization, according to federal law enforcement, with “Jimmy the Greek” Gerodemos and “Dean Gem” Gialamas ID’d as the organized criminal bosses.
A third restaurant in the southwest Chicago suburb of Burr Ridge is a named component in the gambling operation, with Capri owner-operator and convicted felon Gigi Rovito among those facing gambling and extortion charges.
NBC 5 Investigates has learned that the cornerstone of the case is an informant who visited all three restaurants; a spy whom the FBI managed to bake into the Gerodemos organization and someone identified in court records as “the UCE,” aka undercover employee.
That clandestine employee secretly worked at Gerodemos restaurants on behalf of the FBI for more than one year.
According to the government court filing, the mole “routinely met with James Gerodemos and his associates observing the structure, organization, procedures, and accomplices involved in Gerodemos’ gambling operation.”
“It’s incredibly dangerous. It’s just like in the movies,” said Ron Safer, a former assistant United States Attorney in Chicago. “If they discover that you’re an undercover operative, your life is on the line because people know that they’re going to go to jail if you testify and survive. So it’s very dangerous. It’s very tricky. And I can’t tell you the number of times on a wiretap people say, ‘Be careful, our phone might be tapped,’ but they still talk.”
A former federal prosecutor and frequent NBC Chicago contributor, Safer said evidence gathered firsthand by someone working next to an unsuspecting criminal is invaluable, especially when they are wearing a hidden recording device. And this unnamed FBI operative was. making dozens of hours of “surreptitious recordings”
“You can cross-examine a witness, you can’t cross- examine a tape recorder,” Safer said.
And the tape recorder was running, according to authorities, when on at least two occasions that undercover restaurant employee and his boss “Jimmy the Greek” came to Capri in Burr Ridge, the home of self-styled chef owner Gigi Rovito, who is charged in the gambling/extortion case.
“The person could have a transmitter on them so that they don’t have to have a microphone,” Safer said. “A transmitter is much easier to conceal. And it would be transmitting to a nearby receiver. It could be any number of very sophisticated means to capture the recordings of what’s going on in real time.”
The Chicago attorney representing James “Jimmy the Greek” Gerodemos is laying into the government’s use of an undercover employee. Beau Brindley told the NBC Chicago investigative team that “the use of undercover agents and employees is a common method that the federal government uses to manipulate and manufacture evidence. It is all fake and staged to try to create crimes that a defendant would not commit on his own. It is a corrupt investigative tool.”
Gerodemos is being held without bond in Indiana and Gialamas was arrested April 30 in Puerto Rico. Gigi Rovito was released on home confinement.
